When collective bargaining agreements between professional sports leagues and their players’ unions expire, lockouts follow apace. CBA is up, doors are shut. What a strange phenomenon this is.

Lockouts are instituted because the owners want leverage. If leagues stop playing, owners stop paying — and once the players miss a few paychecks, they get pliable. It seems a curious way to do business, with all the collateral damage to fans, sponsors, local businesses and the sport itself, but so it goes.

The response from labor has been to decertify its unions. It is a trend. The NFL and NBA players’ unions willfully broke up, albeit temporarily, last year in a counter-effort to gain leverage. The NHL Players’ Association may be headed this way. It is the story of the moment as the lockout creeps into its 11th week.

By decertifying and dissolving their union, the players can file antitrust lawsuits against the owners. Generally speaking, it works like this:

Restrictions on the marketplace — from salary caps to free-agent rules to rookie wage scales — are agreed upon in collective bargaining. When the players remove the union’s power to negotiate on their behalf, they are no longer bound by these restrictions, and they are free to file antitrust suits and argue that owners have unlawfully fixed the market.

Lockouts can be an antitrust violation and they are the targets of the first suits. NFL players, with Tom Brady as a lead plaintiff, sued to end the football lockout last year. NBA players, in multiple filings, sued to end the basketball lockout last year.

The aim is to spook the owners. Do they want to wrestle these suits and risk monetary damages? Do they want to contemplate the distant threat of destroying the way a league regulates its marketplace?

In June, NFL players initially won their case, the lockout was lifted and the league was thrown into chaos before the ruling was overturned.

In the case of the NBA last year, the union was dissolved and players began suing in mid-November, a tentative settlement was reached by the end of the month, the union re-formed on Dec. 1 and a new CBA was ratified a week later.

The NHL should be so lucky.

NHL players have not yet started the federal decertification process, which can take up to two months. Given this time frame, a step down this path might mean killing off the rest of the 2012-13 season. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly has noted as much.

What a lovely dance this is: lockout, union dissolution, lawsuits, cha-cha-cha, kill the season, screw the fans, give the sport another black eye.

The players have little choice but to follow this tune. They got destroyed in the last go-around, when they agreed to a salary cap and a 24-percent salary rollback. They did not go the decertification route then, but they may have to now. Their negotiating partner has been too intractable.

The players have conceded much while the league has conceded little. The players have drafted the most recent proposals and the league has not only dismissed them, it has refused further negotiations. Despite all of this, the two sides are not all that far apart on the key issues. Why is there no deal? Many players believe the league is willing to sacrifice another season in an effort to break the union.

Thus, the decertification movement is gathering momentum. Last week, it gained voice when Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller told The Globe and Mail of Toronto that he was all for dissolution. Although Miller made it clear that he was not speaking for any other player, it is fair to say his contention — that owners “want to see if we will take a bad deal because we get desperate, or if we have the strength to push back” — is not isolated. Besides, there is history to consider: The league used the same playbook eight years ago.

Yesterday, it was announced that both sides had agreed to sit down with a federal mediator. That is good news, but it does not mean peace is at hand. The NHL tried mediation eight years ago and it did not work. The NBA tried mediation last year and there was no bargain until the antitrust suits started flying.

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